paging steve magness

[atreyu77789]

what do you think of training in flats? Ive personally found that it works but i just wanted to hear the opinion of someone who has vast training knowledge.

[Renbircs]

He wrote about it on his site.

[atreyu77789]

whats his site? i dont remember

[AzN at LARGE]

PM?

[sjm1368]

site is
http://magstraining.tripod.com

I've commented on training in flats on the site, but to sum up my opinion...

I think it's great if you work into it gradually and can biomechanicaly handle. The best part about flats is that it can help "force" you to run correctly without you doing anything or thinking about running form what so ever. The bad part is that while your form might improve, you have no idea what you are doing in regards to running form and lose the feeling of what it's like to run correctly. In addition to this, flats do not mean that your running form will magicly improve, for some people, running in flats won't do the trick and they will have to consciously think about changing their form. Why you have to be extremely patient and gradual is that if you run barefoot or with flats, you start using muscles in ways that you never did when wearing heavier constrictive trainers. This is good because you'll start to develop the muscles of the foot more, but you have to be careful because they haven't been used in such a way in a long time. It's easy to get hurt by being gung ho and switcing to flats completely, then end up getting achilles tendonitis or some other foot related injury because you are putting too much pressure on a tendon or muscle, that hasn't been used or developed in a long time. It'd be the same as if you hadn't sprinted in years, then one day start to sprint every day, you'd get extremely sore because your bodies not adapted to it and it wouldn't be a smart thing to do! Another example would be, if you are a guy who trains in your heavy trainers, decides to add barefoot running, so you add 20 minutes of barefoot running a day. Well I guarantee you that certain parts of your feet and especially your calf muscles will get extremely sore, and if you keep doing it over and over without adaptation will lead to injury.

As mentioned above, the main benefits of flats as I see it is improvement in natural running form, and strengthening of feet and lower leg muscles. The drawbacks is if your not a decent;y biomechanicly efficient runner, then flats can lead to injury. Also making the transition too fast can also lead to injury. Each case has to be looked at from an individual basis. I wear orthotics because without them i put to much torque on my achilles when I step down and push off, causing achilles tendonititis. Since haveing achilles tendonitis my junior year, I've run for 3 years without any lower leg problems, so why should I switch to flats? Well one could argue for the form reason or strengthening feet reason, but I feel that if I switch to flats without orthotics then I'd increase my risk of achilles tendonitis flaring up again. So my solution is this: I consciously work on my running form and have studied running form in order to know what I'm doing right or wrong. I film and watch myself running at various speeds to see what I am doing wrong, and then try and fix it. By doing this, I take care of the form problem, and make my running form more efficient and natural. As for the strengthening of feet that flats may give, I've built up to where I can run barefoot for 2 miles or so once or twice a week or do barefoot strides. In addition to this, when I walk around at home or most places I go barefoot or a minimal shoe. This allows me to help strengthenin my lower leg without overdoing it. In addition to this, on my hard efforts or threshold runs, I wear a lightweight trainer with orthotics. On all easy runs I wear a normal heavy trainer though with orthotics.

It's all about minimizing injury and getting benefits. I've figured out the best way for myself to stay injury free while still getting the benefits of training in a minimalist shoe and so should you guys.